


just give me a reason

by belovedmuerto



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Meet-Cute, Pre-Slash, sorta - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-13
Updated: 2020-05-13
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:00:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24171691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/belovedmuerto/pseuds/belovedmuerto
Summary: Jack still hasn’t figured out how to actually go about waking up the gorgeous man who fell asleep in his bed last night.
Relationships: Eric "Bitty" Bittle/Jack Zimmermann
Comments: 14
Kudos: 217





	just give me a reason

**Author's Note:**

> OK wow so I've been reading A LOT of omgcp fic since the comic finished up, and off and on over the last several years I've thought about writing this.
> 
> And then it wouldn't leave my head. BUT.
> 
> I only wrote a tiny bit of it, because I just needed to get it out of my head, and I don't really write in more than one fandom at a time, ever. And I don't really plan on writing anything else of this, or in this fandom. Strictly a one-off.
> 
> SO here's the background I skipped in the fic: Jack still ODed and took time off, but he didn't go to college, he got back to the business of hockey and worked his way back up. He still ends up with the Falconers. He gets a lot of therapy, and at some point figures out that he needs stuff other than hockey, so he gets into photography. Because he's Jack "100%" Zimmermann, he's really good at it, and he eventually ends up with an art agent, and a couple of lowkey shows. At some other point or another, he came out and has been out for a few years at this point, although he doesn't really date much/at all.
> 
> He has the same art agent as Lardo. They meet at one of her shows. He also meets Shitty, and they all get to be really good friends.
> 
> Lardo and Shitty know Bitty from Samwell and hockey and they're also awesome friends. Bitty has a bakery and maybe a really popular cookbook.
> 
> They were all at Shitty and Lardo's wedding! And Jack and Bitty were sitting next to each other at the same table and hit it off. Jack gushes a lot over the mini-pies to Bitty before he finds out that Bitty made them all. Bitty is utterly charmed and finds Jack hilarious. 
> 
> I think that's the basics, although I definitely have a lot more background in my head. Feel free to ask for clarification if needed, or more details!

Jack still hasn’t figured out how to actually go about waking up the gorgeous man who fell asleep in his bed last night and is maybe freaking out a little bit about it because it’s going to be so godawful awkward even he can’t deal with it when he hears a faint banging coming from outside the room.

He opens the door a crack and sees. Nothing. _Dammit_. He sticks his head all the way out and looks up and down the hall until he sees the source of the banging. Well, knocking, but Jack is still extremely flustered.

“Shitty!” he hisses.

The source of the knocking looks around and sees Jack. He abandons Bitty’s room--where Eric definitely is not--and comes down the hall.

“Jackabelle,” he calls. “Wanna go out to breakfast with Lards and Bits and me? You’re more than welcome, as soon as I manage to drag Bitty out of bed, anyway.”

“Um.” Jack says.

Shitty’s face goes serious. “You OK, bruh?”

“Um,” Jack says again. He steps back and gestures for Shitty to come in, making a strangled shushing noise as Shitty passes him and sees--

“Oh. Well, that explains that.” Shitty gives Jack an assessing look. “You magnificent motherfucker.”

Jack pushes him out into the hall and pulls the door mostly shut behind himself. “He passed out in my bed,” he says, refusing to let himself blush.

Shitty’s eyebrows climb up his forehead, and he crosses his arms. Jack knows him well enough to know what’s coming. And he absolutely deserves it, even though nothing happened.

“He was drunk. His room key didn’t work, so I told him he could call the front desk from my room. We got to talking, he passed out. Nothing happened, Shits.”

And Shitty must see how freaked out he is, because he just says “OK, Jack,” and pulls him into a hug.

Jack sort of. Melts into it. He doesn’t let himself have affection very often, and Shitty has sensed that from the first time they’d met--at one of Lardo’s shows--and has been foisting as much affection as he’ll allow onto him ever since. Jack hasn’t quite figured out if he’s special in that regard, but honestly? He’ll take it.

“Should I wake him up?”

Shitty lets him go and steps back with a shrug. “Honestly, he’s a bear when he’s hungover. Probs best to just let him wake up on his own. Tell him to text Lards when he’s coherent. Maybe make some coffee? We can wait a while to eat, it’s cool.”

“OK,” Jack agrees. That doesn’t really help a whole lot with the gorgeous man in his bed or the freaking out, but at least it’s something.

“Hey, Jack?”

Jack looks at Shitty, who is now grinning at him.

“I know this is whatever right now, but just so you know, I’m going to chirp you for this for the rest of our lives.”

Jack puts his face in his hands and groans, and Shitty is laughing as he heads down the hall towards the elevators.

Jack straightens up and squares his shoulders, and accepts the awkward coming his way, and goes back into his room to face it.

He calls room service for a pot of coffee and some toast, and bananas. And then he goes about taking a shower and getting dressed, since it’s clear his routine is completely out the window this morning.

He can go down to the gym at his apartment when he gets home. It’s OK that he can’t run this morning as he’d planned.

He glances at the lump in the bed and realizes that he’s more OK with that than he’d thought he would be. Huh.

Jack’s phone vibrates in his pocket, and he takes it out to see he’s gotten a text from Lardo. “Shitty says he forgot to tell you to make sure you give Bits your phone number. He says you can’t refuse because he’s the groom and he gets what he wants.”

“Isn’t that supposed to be a birthday thing?”

“Probs, but go with it because you want to anyway.” 

Jack can see her shrugging at her phone. And it’s not like she isn’t right; Lardo is very rarely actually wrong. He shrugs as well.

“Just go about your morning bruh, Bits sleeps like the dead.”

He gets one last text from Lardo a few minutes later. “Shitty keeps referring to you as a bicon, btw.”

Jack snorts.

Once he’s dressed and has a piece of toast and a banana, he pours himself a cup of coffee and gets out his laptop, sits down on the other bed to watch some tape. He has to get up again immediately to get out his earbuds, but after that he gets settled.

It’s nice, actually. Every now and again, he hears a light snore from the other bed, but Eric really does seem to be dead to the world.

Until he’s not. 

Jack tries not to just stare, but he definitely notices out of the corner of his eyes as Eric shifts, and then turns over, and then he just barely hears his soft moan over the sounds of his tape. It puts thoughts in Jack’s head, even though he knows it’s a bad moan and not a good one.

A few more minutes pass, and Eric sits up, looking around blearily. His eyes land on Jack sitting in the other bed and go wide. Well, wider. His eyes are huge. And gorgeous.

Along with the rest of him. Even hungover and bleary with it.

“Oh,” Eric breathes. “That wasn’t a dream.”

Jack smiles at him and takes his earbuds out. “Hi. No.”

Eric smiles a little back, even though it’s clear that he’s not feeling great at all. He’s also as red as a tomato.

“Jack,” he says, slowly, peeking under the covers and finding that other than his shoes and the jacket and bowtie that are very clearly draped over the desk chair he’s still completely dressed, “I am so sorry, I did not at all mean to pass out in your room which--”

“Hey,” Jack says, cutting him off. An errant thought of other ways he’d like to interrupt Eric flits through his head, and he ignores it for now. “It’s OK. It was late and there were the issues with--”

“My room key,” Eric finishes, clearly just remembering that. “Oh.”

Jack rubs the back of his neck, not sure what to say. He settles on, “Coffee?”

“Yes, please.”

Jack puts aside his laptop and gets up, going to pour him a cup of coffee. “How do you take it?”

“Cream,” Eric mumbles. “Two splenda. Or whatever.”

Jack does as he’s asked and takes the coffee to Eric, sits down again in the other bed.

Eric takes his first sip, and sighs. He watches Jack over the rim of the mug. 

Jack feels. _Seen_.

He likes it.

“Shitty was by earlier,” Jack says after a few minutes of not quite actually awkward silence and staring.

“Oh God.”

“Yeah. Sorry. He said to text Lardo when you’re up, they can wait to go to breakfast.”

Eric makes a noise and breathes,“Breakfast,” reverently.

“He invited me along?”

Eric blinks at him. The blush has not faded at all from his face. Jack likes it. He takes another sip of his coffee, and Eric follows suit. 

“Well,” he says. “I better let them know I’m up, I’m sure they’re both starving. I know I am. Do you have any tylenol?”

“Uh.” Jack gets up and fishes through his toiletries, coming up with a couple of tylenol, which he hands to Eric.

His fingers perhaps linger a bit too long against Eric’s palm, but Eric doesn’t seem to mind. He’s blushing still, or again, Jack isn’t sure which, when he gets his phone out of his jacket and texts Shitty. Or Lardo. Or both of them.

He giggles a little at something on his phone and then tucks it back into his pocket. “OK, I better get down to the front desk and get the room key thing fixed so I can get out of this suit and not be chirped forevermore for a walk of shame that isn’t--”

It’s Jack’s turn to blush. And he’d been doing so well, acting like a mature adult who can handle having a gorgeous man wake up in his hotel room.

“Thank you, Jack, for letting me pass out in your room. I’ll see you in a bit? Shitty said he’d text you when to meet us.”

“OK,” Jack agrees. “Yes. I will see you soon. Uh.”

Eric waits for a moment. Then, “Yes?”

“Can I—” he pauses, takes a deep breath. “Can I give you my number?”

Eric grins at him, a mischievous twinkle in his eye that Jack definitely wants to know more about, pulls his phone back out of his pocket, unlocks it and hands it over. 

Thankfully it’s almost the same model as Jack’s, so it doesn’t take him long to find the contacts app and add himself. He saves that and hands the phone back.

Eric smiles and taps out something quick. Jack hears his phone vibrate on the table where he’d left it. 

“And now you have mine, Mr Zimmermann,” he says. He heads for the door.

Jack follows him, helpless not to.

At the door, Eric turns back to him. He gives Jack a considering look, mutters “screw it,” and leans up to press a soft kiss to his lips.

Jack blinks at him. He’s not freaking out anymore, but his heart is pounding.

“I’ll see you in a bit, Jack,” Eric says.

“Yeah,” Jack agrees.

**Author's Note:**

> [twitter](https://www.twitter.com/BelovedMuerto), or [dreamwidth](https://belovedmuerto.dreamwidth.org), or [tumblr](http://www.belovedmuerto.tumblr.com) i guess.


End file.
